Fluff and Circumstance or The Cult of Ario
by Ze Dybbuk
Summary: In this crack-fiction adventure, Pit is convinced that Lucario, Mario, and Wario are all trying to destroy the world! There's a good chance he's just crazy, but the more everyone learns about it, the wierder it all gets... NOW COMPLETE, IF ANYBODY CARES!
1. Lucario and his Lucario Evil

**A note to readers: **Hmmmm. So I don't really have any notes for the readers. The old version of this chapter had a really, painfully stupid author's note, and this "note to readers" thing is here right now mostly because I just wanted to get that stupid author's note out.

Well since I've already pretty much straight up admitted this is crack fiction, the actual "substance" (for lack of a better word) shouldn't come as a particular shocker. I don't want to SPOIL anything, so I'll just promise that it contains no sex scenes or gory, needless violence. However, it will have some very benign inuendo which shouldn't trouble anybody over the age of thirteen, "comic mischief" since the human race has yet to come up with a more awesome way to describe that, and also about a buttload of really indecent language.

One last thing:

Beware of eggplants.

Okay go.

**FLUFF AND CIRCUMSTANCE** or **THE CULT OF "ARIO"**

Ike was in his room later, stuffing a bag to get ready to go down for a workout. He had been knocked out of this season's brawler tournament, but after a couple months of doing nothing but hanging out and eating chicken he'd put on a few pounds. Marth had yelled at him earlier today for eating five plates of the stuff right in front of him, so for the sake of the vested interest he had in his chicken-munching habit, Ike had decided he'd better start working out again so people would shut the hell up.

He kneeled on his bedroom floor contemplating with a vacant expression whether or not he ought to take his sword with him to practice fencing or to just lift weights and run today. Even if he didn't end up using his sword, he felt like he wanted to take it anyway, you know, just for giggles. Maybe he could split Pikachu's head with it on the way there, or something.

It was nice, not having to unknot it from Pit's haphazard pile of crap. His roommate was a slob and usually winged all his stuff in the corner of the bedroom as soon as he walked in, not bothering to sort what was his from what was Ike's. He did that with most of his other belongings, too: leaving great stinking mountains of his dirty laundry in the middle of the room that Ike would usually end up tripping and falling face first into it; always just chucking his toothbrush back into the drawer, and more often then not, Ike would open it later only to find that their two toothbrushes were making out, one's bristles buried passionately inside the other's; and one other time, Pit had put a five gallon bowl of potato salad in the fridge on top of Ike's leftover fried chicken and just crushed it all into a big greasy crater of mayhem. But Pit wasn't here right now, thank science, and that meant Ike's sword wasn't hopelessly entwined with Pit's bow and shield and wrist-guards and laurels. The squirrelly little bastard had somehow managed to survive this far into the brawler's tournament, and that was the reason for his absence. He was off, more likely than not, getting his ass flattened by Lucario. Ike allowed himself a moment to daydream that he was absurdly lucky, and Lucario ended up killing Pit, and then he wouldn't have to put up with his crap anymore. He'd also probably go do a little dance on his grave.

Behind him he suddenly heard the door open and he snapped out of his reverie. He wheeled and leaned through his bedroom door to see a haggard and sick-looking Pit standing with a dazed expression in their living room. He limped over and threw himself face-first into the couch. Ike slunk inside, feeling a conflicting explosion of emotions, mostly a combination of disappointment with Lucario for failing to finish him off, and delight that Pit had at least apparently lost.

"How'd your fight go?"

Pit forced himself up and shot a look of fire at him. "How do you _think_, Fatty? Fan-_freaking-_tastic! Ass hole, Lucario…" he moaned and dropped his head into a hand, "Turned out he _was_ ready yet, after all."

"So he caught you in the middle of a taunt again?"

"Son of a bitch, yes!"

Ike blinked for a minute, thinking. "That was a cutoff match, wasn't it? So if you lost, that means--"

"Yeah, I'm a _knockout_. _Thank _you, Dr. Mario!" He flopped back down on his face, but a moment later his stomach growled and his eyes snapped back open with an air of annoyance. "I'm gonna go grab something to eat. You hungry?"

Although he had just eaten an hour ago and Pit wasn't exactly his first choice for someone to share a meal with, Ike would be damned if he passed up any opportunity for chicken. "Yeah, I'll come--"

"HAH!" Pit gave one short laugh, like a fox barking. "I met Marth on the way back, and he told me you already had five plates of chicken today!" He smirked at him, flickering the tips of his wings mischievously. "You're going to _die._"

"Am not!"

"Odds are you're going to eventually inhale a chicken bone, so…"

"Shut up!" Ike scowled at him, but Pit was bent over laughing like a maniac. "And you're _awful_ damn cocky for just losing your last match today!"

That straightened him out a little. "Well, you shouldn't know anything about what it's like to lose a match, considering you haven't even _had_ one for the past two months. So you shut your face."

Ike stared at him like he was talking gibberish, which is fitting, I guess, cuz he kind of was.

"You know what, Ike?" Pit said suddenly, "We don't need to bugger with this _crap._"

"Well, _now_ I understand everything."

"You _should_. I tell you what. What's it really matter if a guy eats five plates of chicken in one sitting or takes a gooey bomb to the face while he's trying to taunt?" He leaned over closer to Ike and narrowed his eyes at him, staring with a staunch severity. "We spend far too much of our lives dawdling over fluff and circumstance, my friend. What we really ought to be doing is working towards taking out the one source of _supreme_ evil."

"Supreme evil?"

"Oh yes." Pit's eyes narrowed even further before he responded to him with the gravity of the world entire, "_Lucario._"

Ike stared at him blankly. "You're an idiot."

Pit didn't seem put off in the slightest. "And you have a freaky chicken obsession, but I wasn't gonna bring it up again. Yeah, so anyway," and he got up and began to pace the room as if he hadn't just taken a gooey bomb to the face, "I been thinking a' how we can get him, you know, and so far I think our best shot would be right in the morning, huh, when he just gets up so he's still kind of out of it? I was thinking that I could squat up in one of the ceiling corners of the foyer all night like a ninja, and then in the morning you could meet him right outside, underneath of me, and then I'd just drop on his head, huh? That might not do him in though, just that," he mused delicately, "So maybe I'll grab a couple smart bombs before we do our thing, and then once I hit him, you know, I could try and shove one down his throat?"

Ike stared at him blankly. "You're a _psychotic_ idiot."

"Thank you! In return for your unbridled flattery, let me offer to tell you that those ten extra pounds _don't_ make you look like a total drooling slob."

"First of all, it's only eight." Ike groaned and massaged his temples. "Oh my God, why are you my roommate!?"

"Eight, hell! After five plates of chicken today you think it's _still _just eight?" Pit laughed mightily again. "If that's really the case, _you _must be a psychotic idiot, too. Maybe _that's_ why we're roommates."

Ike sighed and wondered in a vague and unfeeling sort of way whether the chicken would be worth it if he had to put up with Pit's crap. So far that was still a "yes," it would take more than Pit's usual brand of obnoxiousness to put a damper on the illustrious promise of chicken. But still, he was thinking…

…and Pit was talking. "Well, we wouldn't _have _to do the foyer plan, I guess, I can kinda understand why you think that wouldn't fly. So instead of that, I don't know. Maybe we could meet him at breakfast then or something and pelt him with a bunch of muffins, although that seems _painfully _mainstream. I guess I wouldn't have a problem with using kumquats, though, you don't hear about stuff like _that_ very often. But on the flipside, I'm not sure I really believe in the purported deadliness of the kumquat variety, you know, I'm willing to embrace change, but I'm still a firm believer in baby steps away from the well-established traditions. A good compromise might be bananas, I guess. Or those little individual cups of half-and-half you get with coffee."

"Shut up, Pit, you're making me hungry."

"Fatty," Pit said exasperatedly, "_Roadkill_ could make you hungry. I don't have the time or the will to avoid or embrace all of your bizarre little personality quirks. Lucario is out there polluting the world with his Lucario Evil, and he has to be stopped!"

"Do you think Lucario could postpone his Evil pollution until we grab a bite?"

Pit looked thoughtful for a minute. "Yeah, he probably would be okay with that, I guess. Lucario is not completely without compassion, Fatty; you need to learn this. Maybe we can use that against him…"

Ike was bopping up and down impatiently. "Yeah, maybe, like throw Pichu in front of a train or something and hope he jumps after him. Can we go now?"

Pit sighed. "Alright, let's go. And, hey, if you see Pichu laying around anywhere on our way down there, let me know, okay? Do something useful for a change, huh?"

* * *

While he was tearing into his sixth plate of fried chicken, Ike took the time to wonder in a disinterested sort of way whether or not Pit's sudden vendetta against Lucario was just a mark of his eccentricity or proof that he'd finally snapped. The way he sat there across from him, twisting his spoon around his soup with an expression of plotting, glaring across the room at Lucario from underneath the shield of one of his rigid, upraised wings, made Ike start to think increasingly that it was the later.

"Hey, Pit?" he began tentatively, "What do you have against Lucario, anyway? I mean, I know he beat you in that last match, but really, is it just that, or…"

Under the malevolent glare he was receiving for bringing the subject up, Ike trailed off. Pit's eyes immediately snapped back over to Lucario, and he began stirring his soup with an increased fervor, showering the table with little drops of eggplant paste. "Look at that little bastard over there," he growled, and whether it was to himself or to his roommate Ike couldn't tell, "Getting his _curry_, probably trying to practice, work his way up to the super spicy stuff without it killing him so he can go freakn' nuts on the battlefield with it, while the rest of us are being charred into cinders around him! Don't underestimate him, Ike! No matter what happens, he can't so much as get an inkling of a vagueness of a suspicion! The fate of the world hangs in the balance!"

"Of course it does," Ike grumbled, "But have you ever considered that maybe he just likes curry?"

"_No one_ could like curry!" Pit hissed back at him, "It's the food of the communists!"

"Of course it is." Ike grumbled again, and began picking apart his chicken very slowly to try and buy himself some time to think of a way to get the hell away from Pit.

"_FATTY_!" Pit snapped at him so loudly that many people around them looked up. He had the most hardcore expression of disbelief on his face that Ike had ever seen, and had drawn up his other wing to shield himself more completely before motioning to Lucario.

Ike glanced at him. He had taken a seat with Mario and the two of them were talking energetically across the table. He looked back at Pit. "So what?"

"So what!? _So what_!? Ike!" He slapped his palms against the table and stared him right in the eye, clearly baffled by his roommate's inability to see the obvious. "What reason would he have for sitting with Mario? If the two of them are talking, that _clearly_ means they're in cahoots!"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, clearly…" Ike wondered if Pit would try to stop him if he said he had to leave.

"Think about it!" Pit's eyes widened with a new revelation. "_Mario_? _Lucario_? Dude! Their names are like, practically the same! Why else would they both end in "ario"? It's probably the insignia of their cult, you know, how they identify their members."

Ike's patience was beginning to wear by now. "Mario's been here, like, forever, and Lucario only showed up last year!" He had been trying to throw a wrench in Pit's rationale, but not to great avail.

"Holy _hell_!" Pit put his hands over his mouth. "Mario's probably the ringleader!"

"That's not what I meant!" Ike snapped, "I meant, Mario's been here forever, and he's always been named 'Mario', so why would his name mean that he's part of a cult now just cuz somebody named Lucario showed up, huh?"

"He _hasn't_ always been named 'Mario'," Pit said quietly, "They used to call him 'Jumpman'."

"Christ almighty, Pit, he still changed it at least thirty years ago! Still long before Lucario ever showed up!"

"He's been plotting a long time…." Pit whispered, shifty-eyed, and still freckling the table with drops of soup.

"Alright, you know what?" Ike pushed his chicken aside and got up, "This has gone on long enough, I can't tell if you're for real or just playing around, but either way you're being an idiot, and I don't wanna be a part of it anymore, okay?"

Pit's jaw dropped, and for one wild moment Ike thought that he'd offended him, but then he noticed that Wario had come up and joined Mario and Lucario.

"What about _THAT_, huh!?" Pit whispered triumphantly, accidentally beaning his spoon off the table in his excitement. It bounced and flew twelve feet over his shoulder, pegging Link in the eye. "Wario? Lucario? Mario? And _all_ of them are sitting together!? You can't tell me _that's_ just a coincidence!"

"Actually, I can."

"Huh uh!"

"It's just a coincidence."

Pit stared at him.

"I told you so."

"Why else would freakn' _Wario_ be talkin' to Mario? Aren't they supposed to, like, freaking hate each other, or something? Why this sudden change a' heart, Ike? Isn't Wario supposed to be, like, Mario's creepy uncle with the gastrointestinal problem?"

"No, Pit! I don't know what the hell Wario's supposed to be! I always just kinda thought of him as a meat sack with legs!"

"Yeah, but he and Mario don't really get along, anyway, right?"

"I guess not. Whatever. Are you gonna finish that?"

Pit hadn't touched his soup, but it was still mostly empty since he'd dumped a lot of it out on the table. He scowled up at Ike. "It's _my_ soup, you fat ass!"

"Give it to me!"

"No! I haven't eaten freaking _anything _today, and you're an _ass_ hole!"

"But it's cream of _eggplant_."

A look of abject horror seized Pit's face and frantically he pushed the bowl across the table, touching as little of his skin to it as physically possible, and in the process ended up spilling most of what remained of it. Trembling he backed off away from it, drawing his arms tight against himself and collapsing his wings as far as he could. "T-take it! J-j-just t-take it!" he sputtered, eyes widening and never leaving the bowl, "It's not, it's not…r-really…?"

"Hey, chill!" Ike scolded him quietly, quickly swiping the bowl and setting it behind him on an empty table. "It's gone, Pit, you can stop being psychotic."

Pit just trembled wide-eyed, giving him a look of helpless betrayal. "You can't do that crap to me, Fatty! I _told_ you I don't like eggplants!"

"Yeah, but when you said that I just thought you just meant—"

Pit brushed him aside and scowled over at Mario and Wario as if the evil eggplant incident hadn't even happened. "They seem pretty chummy _now_, though, don't they? Funny how secret cults of _evil_ can do that to people…"

Ike started to think that he might be able to get up and walk out without Pit even noticing, he was engrossed enough in his paranoid delusions. Just as he began to slide his chair back an inch, though, Pit hissed at him urgently.

"Look _now_!"

Weeping on the inside, Ike obliged him yet again, but this time _was_ different. Across the cafeteria, the three of them had stopped their friendly banter. Wario and Mario were sitting rigidly, and Lucario had gotten up and was flicking his eyes over the room. They hesitated for just a fraction of a moment on Ike and Pit's table, but it was long enough to be noticeable. Without another backwards glance, he scuttled off, and just as his tail disappeared behind the door, Mario and Wario got up to follow

"Now!" Pit said triumphantly again, "Where exactly do you suppose our little meat-sack cult is off to, hm?"

"I _obviously_ came in at the wrong part of _this_ conversation."

The two of them jumped. Pit turned around to see a disgruntled Link looming over him. He had a hand slapped over his right eye and held out a spoon to Pit.

"I believe this is _yours._"

Pit was apparently oblivious to the fact that he was supposed to be intimidated and apologetic. "Link! Holy crap, perfect timing! Okay, this is great, really," he took the spoon from it and started flicking it between his fingers since his dastardly soup was gone, "Three-on-three really is better, Ike, I think we should get him in on this!"

"In on what?" Link's ears flicked back, and what they could still see of his expression was marked with a genuine curiosity.

"That _does_ seem to be the question of the evening, doesn't it?" Ike grumbled and flicked a chicken bone across the table.

"Now, _Fatty_, don't be sour," Pit said in a patronizingly lighthearted way, although Ike had no idea in hell what had happened to make his mood better. "We got a mission, now! We've got to go right now and figure out what they're up to!"

Link turned to Ike with a look of delighted disbelief. "He _really_ calls you Fatty?"

Ike pretended not to hear him.

"And you let him get away with it?" Link leaned in closer to him and whispered. "Can _I_ call you Fatty too?"

"No! Shut up! You're not supposed to talk!"

"Well, _you're_ not supposed to be so _cheap_, Fatty!" Pit whooped at him, "Now come on, before they all get away!" He jumped out of his seat and charged towards the door. Link knocked his head between Pit and his own table a few times, apparently torn about what he ought to do, but he eventually took after the squirrelly little angel. His decision probably had something to do with the fact that his own table had consisted of Olimar and Diddy Kong. Ike got up reluctantly and plodded after them.

They went _all over _the damn place. Ike wasn't exactly in the best shape of his life, if you hadn't managed to surmise that by now, and he struggled as he ran just to keep the dancing green tail of Link's hat in his view. His head began to swim and blur as endless, monotonous corridors zoomed past him. He didn't pay attention to these at first, but as their frenzied sprint continued for a few more sweaty minutes, he started to, just to take his mind off the blood pounding in his skull. After that, of course, he realized they had passed the door to the cafeteria six times already and that his ass hole roommate was just doing laps around the first floor. He was about to start screaming obscenities in Pit's general direction (since he couldn't seem to catch up to him and kill him) when he caught Link finally thumping up one of the stairwells. Ike felt the inside of his mouth starting to coat with something slimy that served the dual functionality of being absolutely disgusting _and_ making his already difficult breathing completely impossible. He stomped up the stairs after the two of them, anyway. By now he felt totally lightheaded, and just when he thought he wouldn't be able to go on, he rounded a corner and found the two of them suddenly stopped rigid in front of a doorway.

While he was bent over to catch his breath, Pit explained in low whispers, "They met in the auditorium, so we came to the stage-balcony entrance. We'll have a better chance of spying on them from up here without them seeing us."

"Yeah, yeah, right, great plan, Pit, good stuff, really," Link was nodding energetically, "Uh, hey, say, who exactly are we spying on again?"

"Wario, Lucario, and Mario. They're in a cult of pure evil." Pit said matter-of-factly.

"Really?" Link for his part only sounded slightly surprised, "They do a pretty good job of hiding it, then."

Pit narrowed his eyes in a hardcore sort of way. "Not if you know what to look for."

Ike still had his hands on his knees, breathing heavily and generally just trying not to pass out. "Right…" he choked, "Obvious…the signs…their names all end in "ario"…Wario's a meat-sack with legs…it only makes sense…if you're on a crack high…"

Pit crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip at him. "Well, nobody asked you to come, Fatty. If you're all for Mario and his Mario Evil taking over the whole world, maybe you should have just stayed behind and eaten another plate of chicken."

"I have to make sure…" he sputtered, "You don't kill Link."

"Oh don't be _silly_," Pit brushed him off, "Link here is _prepared_ to die for this cause!" He slapped him on the shoulders heartily. Link wasn't looking so eager anymore.

"Ya know, Pit, maybe I'll just catch you later…"

"Nonsense!" Pit barked at him, and since he already had him by the shoulders, shoved him through the doorway. He brushed his hands off and turned to Ike, cocking his head with a look of something like concern. "You're not gonna _die_, are you, Fatty?"

Ike looked up at him with his eyes watering. "What, exactly, were those six laps around the first floor for?"

"One for each of your plates of chicken today."

Ike stared at him.

"It's sort of a celebration kind of thing. Sort of like how the American flag has a stripe for each colony, huh? I figured it was only fitting."

"Pit…"

"I _was_ thinkin' about fireworks instead, but that's just entirely too much money, and frankly Fatty, I just don't like you enough to plunk down that kind of change. Chicken accomplishment or no."

So then Ike made to strangle him, but he was able to dodge his best efforts, and instead of tormenting his roommate further, Pit re-opened the door he'd just shoved Link through. "After you."

Keeping a wary eye on Pit as he smirked like a fox, Ike obliged, walking onto the poorly lit stage balcony and looking around. The platform he was walking on was made from very squeaky wood planks, and all around there were large, generic, nondescript objects with tarps conveniently thrown over them so I wouldn't have to describe them in any greater detail than that. Cobwebs hung from the wiry tangle of track lights above him, and the ceiling stretched so far beyond those that he couldn't see it. He squinted and looked around for Link.

Pit was more brazen. He clopped in through the doorway. "Now, where the _hell_ is he?" he asked Ike loudly, "Hey, Link! Link! _Liiiiiii_--"

Ike clapped a hand over his mouth. "Shut up! Aren't we supposed to be _spying_ on somebody?"

"You make it sound like I'm doing it wrong."

Ike stared at him.

"Oh, hey, look!" Pit said happily, "There he is, over there! Trying to melt into that wall and hope we don't see him, the little dickens."

Link had smothered himself back-first against one of those handy generic tarp-covered objects, but didn't flinch in the slightest when he saw Pit and his crazy ass. Instead, he threw a finger to his lips (we won't say which finger) and looked around nervously. "_Be careful_!" he hissed, "I think there's _someone else up here with us_!"

"Well of _course_ there's somebody else in here!" Pit barked, "We're on a super secret _spy_ mission, remember, you little silly!"

Link stared at him with something between horror and astonishment. "Sweet Farore! How did I get roped into this again?"

"You came willingly."

He looked as though he was ready to try and argue about the teleological implications the mind-body problem played in the phenomenologist's theoretically impossible view of freewill, but instead, he happened to glance over at Ike, gasped and shouted, "Watch out! Behind you! It's them!"

Ike turned to try and ready himself for the attack, but he was too late. Something collided with his back, and a moment later something else struck the back of his legs. He toppled forwards, and lay in a dizzy pile on the floor. Something heavy gently tapped the back of his head twice, and he felt his spine shiver as he got the feeling it was being held precariously over top of his head.

"I'm only going to ask you good people this once." A cool voice emanated from whoever was standing on his back. "Gather yourselves and leave us to our devices. We are in the midst of important work, and you three will only get in the way and cause more trouble than you're worth."

"Yeah! Ya little monkey-knocking shitwads!" The second voice wasn't quite as cool as the first. "Ya'll just gonna take a shit on everything! Get cho little bastard asses outta hea', or Popo'll plug _Dike_ and his blue-furred pretty boy scalp right through de flo'!"

Popo? It was just the freaking Ice Climbers? Enraged by this development, Ike launched himself to his feet and was able to catapult Popo twelve feet across the room and into a particularly hard-sounding generic tarp-covered object. He had to admit he was relieved to find his strength undiminished.

Nana just sorta stood there and watched Popo fly for a minute. He slid down the generic tarp-covered object and landed on his head. She sighed in a resigned sort of way and then launched herself after him, striking the same generic tarp-covered object, only to slide down it and land on _her _head.

Link was scandalized. "Dude! That's not even accurate! If you hit one of them, the other one keeps fighting!"

"No! Shut up! You're the only one who even cares!" Pit turned to the Climbers, who were pulling themselves to their feet dizzily and holding their heads. "On a related side-note," he said to them cheerfully, "The important work you were in the midst of doing until we took a shit on everything? That wouldn't happen to have involved--" he paused and narrowed his eyes for dramatic effect, "The Cult of Ario, would it!?"

Nana and Popo gasped simultaneously, and then just sat in apparently shocked silence until Nana finally spoke up. "Actually, no. What's that?"

"Listen," Ike grumbled apologetically, "I'm really sorry, I don't think Pit's been remembering to take his anti-stupid medication lately, and now he's thinking that Mario, Lucario, and Wario are trying to destroy the world."

"Oh, but they are!" Popo said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah! Damnit, why didn't _we_ think of calling it 'The Cult of Ario'?" Nana smacked him in the back of the head.

"Probably because that's retarded." Popo grumbled and rubbed the sore spot.

"But you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT for trying to stop them!" Nana continued ostentatiously, waving her stubby little Nana-arms all over the dang place, "You see, not only do they exemplify _supreme unholiness_ by having all their names end in "ario", but they're _also_ in possession of the three Ignoble Gasses!"

"Ignoble Gasses!?" Pit said with a cliched flavor of terror, bringing his knuckles to his lips.

"Yeah, that's right," Nana continued gravely, "The most _dangerous_ and _pervasive_ weapons in the history of the history of the history of the history of the history of history! Mario! With his red fire that burns and destroys all it touches and leaves naught in its wake but charred rubble and unspeakable despair! Lucario! With his blue energy that invades even the most steadfast of wills to bend the denizens of the earth to his own command! Wario! With his shit-colored farts that permeate both cotton _and_ polyester so thoroughly that no amount of dry cleaning, no amount of floral-scented cover-ups can ever mask the carnal stench of partially digested cow meat!"

"That is a _monument_ to disgusting." Pit screwed up his face as if he had just witnessed this attack in action and was trying to obscure it from his view.

"Dude, tell me about it! The guy ripped one next to me, and I had to get a new hat!" Link said in an outrage, wringing his new hat like a lame pigeon. "I gave my old one to Toon Link, and I'm pretty sure that's why he _died_."

"Oh, but that's not the worst of it," Nana continued in a tone of mounting fury, "Ya know what happens when they use 'em all at once?"

Link and Pit leaned in closer, and once he noticed Ike hadn't, Pit grabbed him by the front of the tunic and forced him down as well.

"It all combines together," Popo finished for her, "To create the _ultimate source of Subspace_."

They stared at the two of them.

"It's Super Effective!"

They stared at the two of them some more.

Ike facepalmed. "Really, I get that they've each got some…interesting powers, but if they _really_ could unleash the ultimate source of Subspace just by using them all at once, don't you think they would have by now?"

"No no no no no no no," Popo shook his head furiously, "That's just a set up! They only _want_ us to think they don't have any powers, and then BOOM!"

"But if they could unleash it anytime they wanted to, it wouldn't matter if anybody knew or not!"

"_Clearly_," Nana elaborated, "The reason they're waiting is to test all the other brawlers to see who's worthy of being spared and made a part of the New World Order."

"Yeah, they only want the _smart_ ones."

"Well, Christ, _they_ don't even make the cut!"

Pit stood up, walked over to Ike, gave him a hardcore look up and down and then promptly swatted him in the head. "Get yourself together, Fatty, and quit being such a communist!" he boomed as Ike tried to uncross his eyes, "You're spending too much time on the fluff and circumstance, my friend! We've got _more_ to put into our lives, a higher duty to fulfill, and meanwhile you can't even see it over your freaking chicken fetish and your _critical thinking_!"

Well, Ike was about to turn around and kill him, but at that exact moment the door to the auditorium's audience seating opened a hairline and the stage balcony and all that brouhaha going on up there silenced. They all turned their gazes on that string of light as it exploded into a full golden rectangle and three dark shapes huddled through it. Lucario glanced about the hallway outside quickly before closing the door with a snap and then leaning against it with a sigh of marked relief.

He looked up and scowled at Mario. "This is ludicrous!"

Wario looked as if he were of a similar opinion. "Waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Mario merely tightened his beady little Mario eyes on them for an uncomfortably long time. Once the moment had become almost unbearably awkward and Lucario and Wario were pretty well sure that he wasn't going to respond, he finally said, "It was a necessary precaution."

"Necessary!?" Lucario spat, "Mario! No one even knows what's going on except us!"

Mario shifty-eyed. "_They_ know. And that's enough. They could ruin _everything_ and now we're the only ones who can stop them. It's for the greater good, Lucario."

"Well,_ I_ don't think they're onto us yet." He crossed his arms.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right. That's not what you said before."

Lucario was getting uncomfortable. "Well…_Pit_ kept looking at us. But that doesn't _mean_ anything, I mean, it's not like anybody's gonna listen to freaking _Pit_. Everyone already _knows_ he's crazy, thank science. Even if he _did_ try and do something, it's not like anybody'd be willing to help him, huh?"

Mario shifty-eyed again. "You'd be surprised. He has people."

"How can you _know_ that?"

"I'm freaking _Mario_ and I know _everything_, god damnit!"

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario think's you're crazy." Lucario grumbled at him halfheartedly.

"Wario lost the right to judge other people's sanity when he swallowed his own motorcycle." Mario cleared his throat and then cracked his knuckles. "So anyway, I was thinking that tomorrow would probably be a good time to end it, seeing as how Pit's finally catching onto us since _someone--_" he wheeled on Lucario, "had to go knocking him out and setting him up with all that free time!"

"If you'd been up there and heard 'You're not ready yet!' one more time, you'd have killed that son of a bitch, too."

"Well," Mario shifty-eyed yet again, "That may or may not be true, but it still does not excuse _you_ from doing it."

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario wants you to shut up," Lucario snapped, "And where are we gonna be doing this thing tomorrow, anyway?"

"Right here!" Mario laughed in response, "This _is_ their headquarters, after all!"


	2. Only SheMen Make Plots

**Author's Note:** I don't own any Nintendo characters! Really! I am not that awesome. We works with whats we gots. Or, okay, well, in this case we works with whats we don'ts gots. /grammar.

**Also:** Wowee! This chapter is, like, 84% less massive than that first one, and I think all fourteen people who have read this story can agree that this is definitely a good thing. Sporadic updates, hm? That's silly. I really have no excuse, especially because this story was done a llllooooonnnnggg time before I ever even signed up on this site. I guess I am an even more ludicrously lazy person than I had previously assumed. Again, wowee. So for the fourteen of you out there who have been shaking your heads and clicking your tongues with disapproval, rest assured, I am ridiculously sorry, and will remedy this issue ASAP. And by that of course I mean six weeks from now when I remember at 3 in the morning and am all like "Ho shit!"

In the meantime, please enjoy this fetid spoonful of Fluff and Circumstance.

Ok, go.

* * *

The five of them had gone back to Pit and Ike's room to plot. But as of now, they were mostly skulking. Pit was pacing fervently and muttering under his breath, but no one said anything to him, because as much as Lucario was a psychotic little pants-shitting mama's boy, he had got one thing right in that everyone pretty much knew that Pit was out of his dripping mind.

Link was sitting with his elbows on the arm of the couch, his eyes carefully tracing Pit's movements back and forth over the floor. "So…" he began tentatively, "What are we gonna do?"

Pit had stopped momentarily to glare at him as he asked this. "I don't know!" he cried despondently, turning around to pace some more.

Ike was sitting cross-legged on the floor. "Aw, come on Pit!" He was trying to sound supportive. "What about that one plan you came up with before?"

Pit had had his back to him when he'd said that, and he'd stopped pacing as soon as he started speaking. At first Ike thought it was because he was turning over what he'd said to him, but then he noticed he'd gone completely rigid, with one foot still arched in mid-step and all his feathers ruffled, and most of Ike's hope sort of died after that.

"_Oh,_ so you were paying attention during that, huh?" Pit wheeled on him, scowling, hands curled into fists and lower lip jutting. "I guess I don't sound like such a psychotic idiot anymore, huh?"

"Listen, Pit," Ike said warily, "I'm sorry I didn't believe you, but really, can you blame me, it was really freaking random, alright? I thought the gooey bomb might've blown part of your brain out, and I was a little skeptical. I _did_ go with you though, to scope them out, right? So it's not like I, uh, _totally_ blew you off? And hey, turns out they really _are _up to something. So I believe you _now_, okay?"

But Pit was shaking his head. "No. No. No. No. No, it's _not_ okay, okay? You were supposed to be my _friend_, Fatty, and you just left me hangin' when I needed you."

Ike stared at him dumbfounded. "Pit, we are _not_ friends!"

Pit was scowling even deeper with his arms crossed. "Well I don't see how _that's_ supposed to change anything."

Ike kept his mouth shut for a minute, hoping he'd cool down, before speaking up again. "So why don't we pull off that ninja plan, Pit?"

"Because it's _gay_," he grumbled, cross-armed and boring a hole into Nana's forehead with his big toe. Nana for her part only looked slightly disturbed by this development of events.

"Look," Ike snapped, "I already said I was _sorry._ What the hell else am I gonna have to do to make it up to you?"

Pit finally let his wings go limp and he looked thoughtful for a minute. "Well," he began uncertainly, "You _could_ give me a hug."

Ike looked disgusted. "No! Goddamnit, people already probably think this fanfic is yaoi just cuz we're in it together!"

"Please?"

"No!"

"Pretty please?"

"Go to hell!"

"Pretty please with a cherry on top?"

"Screw you!"

Pit was pensive for a minute. "Pretty please with a _chicken_ on top?"

Ike sat motionless for several minutes, then, very carefully, he got to his feet, padded across the room, and gave Pit a squeeze.

"I love you, Fatty."

"Don't push it."

Popo, Nana, and Link just sorta stared at them for a minute.

"What are we gonna do about _Mario_ and his cult of evil!?" Link screamed at them.

Ike shoved Pit onto a barstool and slumped back down against his wall. "Well, _I_ vote we kill them."

"Yeah, that sounds pretty good."

"Alright then, it's settled."

"Wait, what!?" Link was scandalized for some reason intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. "Is that it? We're just leavin' it at 'kill them?' Doesn't that seem a little _vague_ to any of you? You think maybe it would be important to peg down _how_ we kill them? You know; murder weapons, alibis, how we're gonna dispose of the bodies? What about when we do it? Or where? Doesn't anybody else think that might be remotely important? Nay, even absolutely critical to the success of the mission? I mean, it's not like we're doing anything else tonight, and only the fate of the world hangs in the balance, it wouldn't kill us to put a little more thought into this!"

They stared at him. "Hey! He shut up!" That was Nana.

"No, Link," Pit shook his head in a hardcore sort of way that completely agreed with his squishy hug five minutes ago, "The Cult of Ario plots, which means plotting is clearly for she-men."

"I'm a she-man!" That was Nana, too.

"Alright, then!" Pit whooped, "We leave the _plotting_ to Nana, and the rest of us _he_-men shall play Pictionary."

Link thrust both his arms into the air and victory-screeched. "SLUMBER PARTY!!" The mind shifts gears rapidly in the face of a he-man game of Pictionary.

So after leaving Nana to plot for seven hours while the rest of them played Pictionary like _real_ men, Link, Popo, Pit and Ike stumbled down to the cafeteria. They all had dark circles under their eyes, graphite smudges on their cheeks, and hardened trails of red coming from their nostrils where they had all simultaneously gotten nosebleeds because Popo misunderstood when he drew a card that said "beaver". Link nearly nodded off twice while he was standing in line for some green jell-o, and the third time he actually _did_, but luckily Lucas was in front of him and broke his fall. Popo spent ten minutes at the register trying to convince the cashier that the leaf he had given her was his credit card, and he ended up getting a free bag of Doritos because she thought he had Down syndrome. While all that was transpiring, Ike was sitting at a table with Pit and trying unsuccessfully to re-tie his headband. Pit's feathers were as messy as his hair and he kept swaying back and forth on the brink of unconsciousness. He glanced up at Ike with an irritable expression.

"Why are you trying to tie a sock around your head?"

"I'm not! You're an idiot!"

Pit launched a hand out at cobra-speed and snatched Ike's headband from him and flung it across the room. It landed in a knotted pile on DK's back. But now that he could see it, Ike realized that it actually _had_ been…his headband.

"You can thank me later."

Ike stared in a disbelieving sort of way over his shoulder. "You got DK's back-hair all over it!" He smacked him in the head, but Pit didn't react. "What's your problem?"

Pit blinked unevenly and tried to shake himself lucid. "Where the hell is _Nana_!?" He banged his fists on the table, then dropped his forehead onto it.

Something under the table squealed and the two of them stared at it dumbfounded. A moment later Nana crawled out.

"Nana," Ike began slowly, "What were you _doing_ under there?"

"Plotting!" she snapped, "I went on the official she-men website, and it said that squatting under tables in your local cafeteria is the surest way to come up with quality plots."

"Oh!" Link had come up to the table by now, dropping himself into a chair and shoveling in a spoonful of green jell-o. "Excellent! So what did you come up with for us?" Popo had pulled up a seat by this point as well, and he tore into his bag of Doritos and rained insanity down all over the damn place.

"Alright," Nana put her hands up and narrowed her eyes. Ike, Pit, Popo, and Link, by now slightly more conscious, all leaned in closer to her, waiting expectantly. "We're gonna go down there," she pointed down the hall, "To the auditorium, and we're gonna go in there, and we're gonna kill them."

They stared at her. Then Popo said, "Nana, that's really not much of a plot."

Ike perked up. "Yeah, it hardly qualified as a sentence."

"Shut the hell up! You people talking to me like mees some kinds of stupids, or summit."

Link nodded enthusiastically, "Alright, alright, what are your other ideas then?"

Nana scowled at him. "I don't _have_ any other ideas. That was _the_ idea. Coming up with multiple plans is for man-whores, and I am _clearly_ a she-man. There's a difference. Keep your shit straight."

"There is no one on earth who could keep this shit straight."

"AH CAN KEEP DIS SHIT STRAIGHT!" Nana squealched, and the entire cafeteria turned to stare at their table. A bead of drool clinging to her chin, she turned and swung a finger at Ike's left eye. "You shits goes and plays Pictionary and leaves Nana to plots! Gah damnit I bets I'm duh only one here who even knows even what even a man-whore even _is_, and here y'all are tellin' me ah can't doesn't stringing sentences together foot cheese." (1)

"You know what, Nana?" Ike grabbed her flailing arm and bent it back at a 153-degree angle, "You don't _have_ to be in this club. No one ever _asked_ you to stop Lucario and his Lucario Evil."

There was stunned silence around the table. Actually, Link was eating his jell-o like a happy pappy and Popo had suffocated himself with his empty Doritos bag a long time ago, so there was nothing stunned in the silence coming from _that_ corner of the table. Pit, however, was gawking outright at Ike with one of his eyes twitching. He slammed his palms down on the table top again and snarled at him. "Ex-_cuuuuuuuuuuuuse_ me!? _Nana_ is the most _valuable_ member in the coalition against evil!"

Ike was still watching Nana as she tried to coordinate herself to wipe the bead of drool off her chin to little avail. "That hurts, Pit. That hurts bunches."

Pit pounded Nana on the back in a hearty sort of way as she wore the expression of a stoned trucker. "Well, _I _think Nana's plan is fan-_freaking_-tastic, and we're going down _right_ now to lay it out!"

* * *

1 Fun Fact: Word did not mark this sentence as a grammatical error.


	3. PlanFoilingFoilWorthyPlans

**Author's Note:** Okay, so chapters three and four were originally just in one big clump, and I had to break them apart because it was just too freaking big. Aaaaand, the place where I decided to break it was _completely arbitrary_. If it doesn't make any sense to you, just remember that the story itself doesn't make any sense either. It helps, trust me.

On a clearly related note, there _may possibly be sequels in the future_. Chapter four will be the last for this pa-ticular story, so if something about it _really pissed you off_ you should say something (coughcoughREVIEWcough) or else expect more of the same in the future. *shrugs* There's only so much I can do, cha.

Also, for some reason I am _really_ proud of Ike's massive run-on sentence explanation. I grin like an idiot every time I read it. It's the little things, cha. It's the little things.

Ok, go.

* * *

Since Ike had long since forfeited anything remotely resembling good judgment in the name of putting off his workout and Link had never really had anything remotely resembling good judgment to begin with, they all set off on their happy-go-lucky voyage to the auditorium of death. Pit liked to call it the "Doom Tomb" and he used that snazzy nickname every time he could in the four minutes it took them to walk there. Which was once.

Their somber vigil amassed before the dank and shadowy swinging puce doors with the panes of safety-glass that lead to the auditorium. Pit narrowed his squirrelly bastard little angel eyes. "Let us enter the Doom Tomb." That was the one time he used that snazzy nickname for anyone who was wondering.

They slunk inside, and Popo (who hadn't really suffocated himself; I only said he did because I have a malicious sense of humor like that and I thought it sounded funny) pulled the creaking door shut behind them. There they squatted in the dusty blue shadows for an untold eternity. Actually, it was really only about two and a half minutes. But it seems like an untold eternity when you're a foot away from Nana and she still hasn't wiped her drool bead off yet.

No one said anything. Popo coughed once.

"This is stupid!" Ike said loudly.

"Shut up, Fatty! Nobody's even talkin' to you." Pit snapped back at him.

"They're not gonna come!"

"They said they would," Link grumbled carefully.

"What the hell do you know?" Pit snarled at him, "You wear a dress and do a gay little dance to make the sun come up!"

"Pit whose side are you on!?"

"_I'm_ on the side _against _evil," he replied ostentatiously, making a pompous little flourish and narrowing his squirrelly bastard angel eyes, "And I tell you what, it's starting to get _pre_-tty hard to tell which one of you is on what side and doesn't can't stringing sentences together foot cheese."

Ike was spared the unspeakable agony of trying to sculpt an intelligent response to that, because at that moment one of the doors to the auditorium slowly squealed open. A long, tapering beam of gold fell into their twilit world, and the Coalition Against Evil immediately shut their freakn' pie holes. The darkened forms of their three nemeses blotted out the heavenly glow from the hallway of the dying fluorescent lights, flickering with the carcasses of about twenty houseflies caught up inside. One of them shut the door carefully and they all crept into the shadows where they crouched and lurked, silently, _patiently_….

Nana finally managed to slurp her drool bead back up into her skull. "GAH DAMNIT, Fatty's _right_, this is freakn' _stupid_ an they ain't COMIN!"

There was utter silence.

"Nana?" Ike whispered, "I think I'm going to kill you."

They lights flicked on at that moment and the Coalition Against Evil squealed like wounded rabbits, or stuck pigs, or Pit whenever he took damage in the original Kid Icarus, except for Pit himself, who in that case squealed like himself whenever he took damage in the original Kid Icarus. The light was really freaking bright, okay, and it stung their tender little retinas and made their irises all tighten to the diameters of gnat sweat glands, and you would squeal like a wounded rabbit or a stuck pig or Pit in the original Kid Icarus too, goddamn it.

Anyway, the Cult of Ario just kinda stood there and stared at them, writhing on the floor in agony and clutching their faces. Mario nodded to Lucario, who flicked the switch off again. The Coalition Against Evil lay there whimpering. Mario cleared his throat.

"You can consider that the appetizer of your lunch special Suffering Platter. Your plans are as good as foiled; we intercepted them long before you were ever onto us and are very well prepared."

Lucario nodded solemnly and pulled out his trusty iron maiden.

Ike blinked in a baffled sort of way. "That doesn't make any sense."

Pit smacked him in the back of the head. "Don't be stupid, Fatty."

Mario narrowed his beady little Mario-eyes at Ike with the gravity of the world entire. "_Explain_."

"Well, our plans are all about stopping _you_, so we would have needed to have heard of _your_ plans before we made _our_ plans, but you're saying that _your_ plans are all based on foiling _our _plans, but that doesn't make any sense, because there's no way you could have heard of _our_ plans before you made _your_ plans, because we didn't even have _our_ plans before you'd planned _your_ plans since _our_ plans came as a plan to foil _your_ plans, and in order to have a plan-foiling-plan, we would have needed to have known what _your_ plans were first, but _you're_ saying that you knew _our_ plans first and that _your_ plan is actually a plan-foiling-plan of _our_ plan, but I already know that _your_ plan came first, before _our_ plan, and that must mean that _our_ plan is the plan-foiling-plan of _your _plan and not the other way around, unless of course I'm mistaken, which would mean that _our_ plan didn't actually come second and _your_ plan really is a response to _our_ plan, in which case _your_ plan would be the plan-foiling-plan of _our_ plan, but _we_ didn't make any foil-worthy plans, only plan-foiling-plans, and since it doesn't make any sense for _you_ to be foiling plans that don't need to be foiled, it must mean that _our_ plans are the true plan-foiling-plans, and in that case must have come second and not first like you seem to have been saying."

There was utter silence.

"Turn on the lights again, Lucario."

"NO GAH DANGIT STOP!" Nana shrieked at Lucario, who froze with a blue finger halfway to the switch. "We be settlin dis stuff raht here, raht now!"

Mario and Lucario exchanged curious glances, and for a moment they seemed uncertain about whether they should humor Nana or just drive a pike through her head. Thankfully, they didn't have to make that very tough decision because the third member of the Cult of Ario stepped in and saved the day, just like freakn' Mighty Mouse on his heroin high.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right!" Lucario pissed himself, "We don't settle stuff with man-whores!"

Nana went nuclear.

"SHE-MAN! NOT MAN-WHORE! THERE'S A DIFFERENCE! KEEP YOUR SHIT STRAIGHT!"

Nana erupted into the air like a speeding rocket with a great column of smoke trailing after her like the breath of a hormonal white dragon. Her face ricocheted off one of the hanging lamps on the ceiling and then she spiraled down out of control into a vortex of death and mayhem and ended up splattering into Mario. Fisticuffs ensued among the slathering, rabid Nana and the Cult of Ario, and through all that, Pit, Ike, Link, and Popo just kinda chilled and watched.

"FIIIIIIEEEEEEEENDS! HERETICS! EGGPLANT-SLAYING BLASPHOMERS OF YORE! SHA-KAH-KAH!!"

She hit Lucario upside the head with a herring.

"Pin her down, Wario!"

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Wario's entire blubbery mass cascaded down upon the bent frame of Nana and completely obscured her from view under the rippling folds of his vast buttocks. That was an awkward sentence.

"Waaaaa-ha-ha-haaaaa!"

"Ho-kay!" Lucario said dizzily as he spit out a few of his teeth that were dislodged by Nana's herring offensive, "We have the prime mover of your demon team, and your leader is well within our cusp! Just a few moments more and the forces of all that is good in the world shall prevail! Your dastardly plans to release the ultimate source of Subspace and enslave all the world as your eggplant-garnering minions ends now!"

The Coalition Against Evil, except probably for Nana, stared at him in utter silence.

For once, Pit didn't know what was going on. "Hey, what's going on?" See, I told you.

Link's ears flicked back and he jabbed an accusatory finger towards them. "We don't have the ultimate source of Subspace! You people do!" The Cult of Ario turned to stare at him as he fumed, but their gaze seemed to unnerve him a bit. "Mario's got his fire and stuff, and, you know, Lucario, you've got your, uh, energy? Or whatever? And then Wario? The uh, the, uh, farts? You know? Remember? You…you…uh?"

Mario shook his head slowly, gravely. "Poor, poor, Link. Is that what they've been telling you?"

Link sat his confused little Link butt right down and didn't say a darn thing else.

Pit shook his wings and held his hands up, a befuddled expression on his face. "Wait, what the _hell_ is going on here?"

"_FOOOOOOLS_!" bellowed Popo, taking off like a little gremlin and cackling maniacally, "They're after me Lucky Charms!"

Mario sat himself down cross-legged and pulled out his trusty Story Stick before starting into his long and colorful explanation, all the while with Popo doing cartwheels behind him and squealing like an inebriated toddler. "Well you see, folks," he began in a friendly way, tapping his tribal Story Stick against the floor with the Pulse of Discovery®, "Allow me to explain your own plot to you.

"You crazy little eggplant-loving bastards have long suffered under the fact that the rest of the world really doesn't like eggplants that much. _Our_ understanding of the eggplant," he motioned to Lucario and Wario who were staring with vapid expressions, "goes _much_ deeper even than that. We recognize the eggplants for what they truly are; the deepest and least mitigated face of pure _evil_. Your leader sent the Twin Minions Nana and Popo to plant the ultimate source of Subspace and cultivate it until the time was right, because, as it is intuitively obvious to the most casual of observers, Subspace is _purple_, just like the Eggplant Menace you wanted to release. That's when we first became aware of your plans, and we kept a careful eye on your Vessel of Subspace, but we have realized in the coming days that the time is nearly nigh, and a failure to act now would rein the course of eternal Eggplant down out of the heavens unto the denizens of the Earth forever and all eternity. And that would suck.

"So now AVAST YE, CREATURES OF DARKNESS!" Mario continued his sermon, raising his hands to the air in the hopes of exorcising this Eggplant Menace, "We gon' kill you, betches."

There was silence. Then—

"You guys are a bunch of psychotic idiots!" Pit scowled at them and crossed his arms. "And I should know psychotic idiots. _I'm_ Kid Icarus."

Lucario backhanded him across the head, which probably hurt, cuz he's got that little spike thing. "Shush you, I know who you are! You come quietly now or we'll kill your Twin Minions Nana and Popo! Don't think we won't!" He pulled out his trusty iron maiden again for handy illustration.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right, Pit!" Mario roared, a wild look in his eye, "We know _all about_ your dastardly doings! Your plans to bring back the Eggplant Menace! Don't think you'll get away with it now!" he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him over towards the rest of the Cult of Ario. On his face.

Pit was hysterical. "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no!" He struggled to his feet, a giant raspberry on his forehead, but Lucario had him by the ankles and pinned him to the ground. "I'm on your side! I don't even _like_ eggplants! They _horrify_ me! I had a traumatic eggplant _experience_! Why would I wanna release a bunch of _eggplants_ into the world!?"

"That's just your façade," Mario explained patiently, "You like to cavort around as an eggplantaphobe, but we know that deep down inside you really love those little suckers and you'd go to any lengths to populate the world with them."

"Yeah, yeah," Lucario put in energetically, and he motioned to Ike, Link, and Popo (who had by now stripped himself of his pants and was frolicking in his eggplant-print boxer shorts), "You even went out and got yourself some peons. It was all very professional, and I have to admit I'm impressed."

Pit fumed from where Lucario had him pinned to the floor. "They're not _peons_, they're _grunts_, and we're all in a Coalition Against Evil to stop you from defiling the world with your Ignoble Gasses by releasing the ultimate source of Subspace, and there are no eggplants involved; although there _was_ going to be a ninja attack until Nana went plotting during our he-man game of Pictionary and came up with our clearly better plan." He threw that last part in proudly and cast a look of adoration towards Wario's ass, but not like that.

Mario looked skeptical and crossed his arms, eyeing Pit all up and down. "You realize that's a complete denial of everything our source has told us? That means it's just your word against his, and frankly Pit, you just look like a slobbering maniac compared to the sophistication of our leak."

Suddenly Popo clamored up to Pit, clutching his scarf and staring him straight in the eye. "Master!" he choked, "They know about our eggplant schematic! We have to go into plan theta! Take off your pants and offer them to the eggplant gods!" He pointed to a satanic purple altar he had just spent the last four minutes constructing from coat hangers and wads of fluff that conveniently no one had noticed up until this point. A look of abject horror crossed Pit's face as he realized what was happening, although I have no idea in hell how he managed to figure it out.

Mario nodded to Popo solemnly. "Case in point. Charming fellow is the picture of urbanity."

Pit gawked, but to his credit, it was in a very urbane way. "Are you kidding me? Freaking _Popo_ told you all this bull crap!?"

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Wario gestured to his bottom.

"Yeah," Lucario explained, "Nana too."

"POPO YOU _SHIT_!!" Pit thundered his fists against the floor and his expression shot poisoned daggers with little fish hooks coming off the ends of them at his face, "You _traitor_, you SET ME UP, I swear to Palu-_freaking_-tena, I am gonna KICK YOUR ASS!!" But Lucario still had him pinned to the floor so it didn't matter. All he could do was rake a set of frantic scratches into the enamel as he tried to pull himself free.

Mario put up a hand and wove it in dismissal. "Now, now, Pit, if that really is your name, we've had quite enough of your hysterics. You need to just lie down like a good little boy and _accept_ the fact that your nefarious plans _just_ _aren't gonna work this time_, okay? You can always try again next time, and it's really nothing to get yourself all worked up over. Now," he ruffled Pit's hair affectionately, "Lucario's just gonna take you over to _this_ happy place," he motioned to a medieval rack1, "And he's just gonna tie you down so you won't try and get away while we're killing your peons."

Ike and Link sat in stunned silence for a moment. "Wait," said Ike, catching Link's eye, "I can't remember; are we the peons?"

Link shrugged.

Pit took a moment just to blink in his bafflement. He turned to the Cult of Ario. "Alright, I have _two_ points. _First_ of all, they're _grunts_. And _second_ of all—WWRRRRAAAAAAGGHHH!!" he gave an fancy-fantastic primordial scream. Spittles freckled Lucario's face.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right. You _did_ make a very impressive second point. But logic is for she-men, so we're still gonna kill your peons."

Pit took a moment just to blink in his bafflement. "_First_ of all, they're _grunts_, and _second_ of all, you _are_ she-men."

"Waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right. Your _second_ second point was nowhere near as impressive as your first second point. Now we're gon' kill your peons twice as hard."

Pit opened his mouth to pollute the air with his grating squirrelly bastard little angel voice yet again, but Lucario cut him off, thank science. "We're gon' kill your _grunts_, excuse me."

Popo had paused in mid-tribal chant to his Eggplant Altar and turned to look at the Cult of Ario with an expression of slight concern. "You're not gonna kill _me_ are you?"

"Well of course we are! Don't be a sillikins."

"But I leaked info for you betches!"

Mario put a hand to his ear. "What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of your concentrated evil. Lucario! Finish stringing Pit up so you can catch that slimy bastard."

Lucario scowled at him. "Get Wario to do it."

"Waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario says he's busy sitting on Nana right now."

Lucario crossed his arms, pouting. "How come _I'm_ the one who always has to do the heavy lifting in this cult?"

"Because you're the only one who's taller than a foot and a half and not crippled by morbid obesity." 2

"Waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"And Wario agrees."

Still grumbling, Lucario snatched Pit up by his wrists and dragged him over to the medieval rack. Pit didn't put up much of a fight, but he did make his first second point a few more times as the straps were being tightened. And for about six minutes afterwards, too. Lucario just kinda stood there and took it until his ire finally bubbled over and he swatted Pit across the face. "Shaddup!"

Pit scowled at him, but otherwise seemed to have consented to rational thought. "Well, it's alright if you kill Nana and Popo, since they were a pair of pants-shitting little she-men and no one liked them anyway, but, you know, you should let Fatty go, cuz he wasn't a part of this at all. Me neither for that matter, but most of my hope's kinda died by now." He glanced sadly between his two wrist shackles.

Mario looked at Ike, then at Link, then at Ike, then back to Link again. "Which one's Fatty?"

Link was internally scandalized, but was too much of a sissy-coward to complain much beyond trembling and whimpering and peeing his pants.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Wario's right, Mario!" Lucario laughed in a carefree sort of way as he continued to crank the ropes holding Pit in place to the upbeat musical score of his anguished screaming, "That's just the operational name he's given to the Vessel of Subspace!"

Although his vertebrae were being separated, Pit still felt compelled to calmly correct Lucario the little sillikins and his petty misunderstandings. "_No_," he said patronizingly, "I call Ike 'Fatty' because he's a fried-chicken-whoring fatass and because he's a lazy cunt who hasn't done jack shit in the past four months."

Mario frowned at him pacifistically, but wasn't offended enough to actually get up and do something about it. "Hey Pit," he said from where he sat on the floor, "This is a _Nintendo_-based fanfic. Let's try and keep this rated 'E' for 'Everybody', m-kay?"

"If it's rated 'E' for 'Everybody', how bout chu take me off the rack?"

Mario carefully ignored him. "Unfortunately for him, the Vessel of Subspace, or "Fatty" as you seem to know him better, plays _far_ too valuable a role in your twisted scheme for world domination for us to simply allow him to walk. He only _thinks_ he's been gaining weight, but in actuality, the Seed of Ultimate Subspace he carries inside of him has been maturing and growing into its final, devastating form."

Ike just sat there for a minute in stunned shock like an ass hat. Pit looked skeptical.

"You know, I'm still about eighty two percent sure he's getting fat cuz he eats a shitload of chicken. Besides, Fatty's ma bud, and he would nevah go hatin' on me like that, growing a race of eggplant aliens in his _innards_. That's the kind of thing that really ruins a friendship."

"Well you see," Mario continued patiently, and he had out his Story Stick again, "The shitload of chicken factor played a big role in why you chose Ike to be the vessel in the first place. Chicken is the staple food of Subspace. Without it, it shrivels away into a black little something that looks kinda like that old woman out of that one episode of Spongebob where they went around selling chocolate. You had to ensure that your Subspace army would have a constant supply of chicken. That's why you chose him."

Pit still stared at him cluelessly, but the gears in his little Pit brain were turning like he was actually trying to understand all this bullshit.

"Ringing any bells yet?" Mario asked casually.

Pit shook his head slowly, purposefully. "No," he said, "But it's very disturbing how well it all fits."

Ike went nuclear.

"PIT!" he shouted, turning magenta, and a couple spittles showered out from him, "How freakin delusional do you have to BE!? None of this makes any sense! It's just like one of your stupid ass rants! They're just making shit up as they go!"

Pit regarded him levelly, then started to nod. "Right, right, right, right…. See, you, it's a good thing I've got Fatty around. I nearly forgot rule number one, and he helped me out, huh, 'Never underestimate them,' right Fatty? Well, it ain't gonna happen again. All your bedlam and brouhaha can't penetrate my _iron wall_ of righteousness. I'm not gonna fall prey to all your _evil_, and your _magic powers_, and your deceptive _mind control techniques_."

Ike felt pretty sure that Pit's new belief wasn't significantly healthier than the one the Cult of Ario was trying to push on him, but hey, what the hell ever.


	4. the rest is just fluff and circumstance

**Author's Note:** EEEEENNNNNDDDDD.

Believe it or not, I found it really hysterically funny that noone cared about this story. Looks like I'm the only person crazy enough to find it funny after all. Huh.

On that note, I guess noone will care that Pit's psycho-logic in the last chunk is flawed, because there is also an Earthbound character named Claus. But maybe he's just not legit either. *shifty eyes*

How does it feel to drown in a little fluff and circumstance. How does it feel indeed.

Ok go.

* * *

Ike felt pretty sure that Pit's new belief wasn't significantly healthier than the one the Cult of Ario was trying to push on him, but hey, what the hell ever.

Mario just shrugged. "Well, okey-doodles. But it doesn't change the fact that it's time to harvest the Subspace Eggplant Larvae and terminate them appropriately. Now Ike, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way involves us slicing you in half, removing the Seed of Ultimate Subspace, embarking upon a fantastic trek across Middle-Earth and casting it into the fiery depths of Mount Doom from whence it was forged."

He stared at them dumbfounded. "What the hell's the _hard_ way!"

"Oh, it's pretty much the same thing. We just have to chase you first."

He stared at them dumbfounded some more.

"I never said it was easier or harder for _you_."

"Alright listen!" Pit whooped at them from where he was stretched taut on the rack. "I don't know what the frik's got these people's panties in a knot, but Fatty, it looks like there's only one thing you can do to make them believe you."

It was a mark of how worried Ike was that he actually had hope for it.

"You're just gonna have to let them slice you in half."

"_WHAT!"_

Pit shrugged and rolled his eyes in an exasperated sort of way. "Just let them slice you in half, then they'll look around in there, see there's no Subspace thingamaboober or Eggplant Larvae or whatever the crap, and then they'll realize they were wrong and you'll be off the hook. Seriously, think stuff through."

"Pit," Ike said as deliberately as he could, "I'll be sliced in half."

"You'll be proven innocent, though."

"_And_ sliced in half!"

Link looked bored. "I don't have anything to do with this at all. Can I leave?"

Lucario barked at him. "_No_, you're a _peon_, sit your ass down!" And Link did then, grumbling, crossing his legs resentfully before pulling out his phone and sending emo texts to all the conformists he thinks are his friends about how his life is just a big pile of poo and no one ever includes him in anything.

"Hey listen up!" That was Popo again, shouting over the general disorder and claiming everyone's attention, because despite the fact that he had constructed a satanic altar in his boxer shorts and done a freaky little primordial dance all around them, nobody really liked Popo enough to pay attention to him for more than three and a half minutes straight. He had taken a hardcore stance, mittened hands tightened into fists, a look of judgement plastered across his features. One of his trembling, woolen reindeer-print hands rose to point at Ike. "There _is_ another way for us to know the truth!"

He took a jolly good stroll over to Ike and leaned against his back. "The Mark of the Eggplant," he said dramatically, "is a marking that marks those marked with the Mark of the Eggplant."

They stared at him.

"Was that a complete thought?" Ike said after awhile.

"Oh it's _more_ than a complete thought," Popo continued, eyes glistening with insanity. "It's hardcore proof that you _are_ the Vessel of Subspace." And before Ike could try and wedge another one of his obnoxious comments in, Popo shoved him over and ripped his tunic off.

"THERE!" The declaration crawled out of his throat and spread its rancid jaws towards the sky. "DO YOU SEE IT! DO YOU SEE THE EVIL OF IT? THE EGGPLANT-NESS? THE _PURPLE!_"

"That's the _bruise_ where you _tackled_ me yesterday, you DIPSHIT," but the room was in an uproar. Mario and Lucario had been whipped into a lather-frenzy and were doing little skip-hop-jig things on the spot. Link had taken a picture and was emailing it to everyone he knew. Ike thought that Pit was laughing at first, but then he heard a long, sorrowful wail pull itself out of him and he saw the tears spraying off his face.

"Oh, _Fatty_!" he sobbed, "I thought we were _friends_! Why would you _do_ something like this? I thought I could trust you! I thought I could _trust_ you!"

Ike was too pissed off to care very much about him right now, and instead he rolled over and snatched up Popo by his twiggy little neck, squeezing with gusto. Right before he was about to disconnect his head from his body, however, Mario and Lucario came barreling towards him with an eight-foot machete, and Ike decided it was time to leave.

He scampered around the auditorium for a little while in wide circles, screaming like a sissy-coward, Mario and Lucario hot on his tail. In addition to the eight-foot machete, they had now also materialized a medieval flail and a bazooka. Still screaming, Ike scurried up one of the stage curtains like the world's gayest Spiderman, which didn't really prevent Mario and Lucario from trying to scurry up after him, but at least he was higher than they were and could stomp them in their faces to try and keep them back. Mario went tumbling to the earth and a little mushroom cloud formed where he hit. Lucario was able to dodge Ike's foot, then he chomped it and Ike screamed even harder and started swinging it back and forth to try and shake him off. Popo, Link and Wario all had a big bucket of popcorn and were sitting together and watching. Link probably could have untied Pit from the rack without the other two making too much of a fuss about it, but he wasn't too worried about him and the thought never occurred.

Ike finally managed to fling off Lucario and he flew through the air and caught on fire and smacked up against the far wall.

The two of them refortified at the base of the curtain, glaring up at Ike with serious malcontent. Lucario plucked out another loose tooth and flicked it aside. Mario's gaze narrowed.

"Alright, Fatty," he said in a hardcore sort of way, and suddenly the world seemed dark and heavy, and Ike's heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach as he realized that Mario was holding a box of matches. "We're bringing an end to this darkness. One way or another." There was a long, caustic scratch and the flame squealed to life, and Mario tossed it, without a single hesitation, onto the curtain.

It just made something like a little cigarette burn and then fizzled out. Seriously, it's a _stage_ curtain, they're not _that_ flammable.

"_Curses_!" Mario cried, and then he and Lucario just tried to rip the freaking curtains down, but at that moment the auditorium doors flew open and that entire room became stifled, still and quiet.

It was Master Hand. And not only that. He had an armada of losers with him, too.

Master Hand pointed his giant floating finger of destiny towards Mario and Lucario. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

Mario and Lucario, for their parts, only looked slightly miffed by this development. "We're trying to kill Ike," Mario replied matter-of-factly, "destroy the Seed of Ultimate Subspace, come on, you know the spiel."

"Oh, thank _God_," Ike cried, "Everyone in this room is _crazy_! You've _got_ to tell them there's no hostile eggplant takeover in progress and that Pit's not trying to destroy the world and that the only things I've got inside of me are bones and organs and stuff and no Seed of Ultimate Whatever!"

"FOOOOOOOOOOOLS!" Master Hand boomed, although I'm not entirely sure how, since he's just a giant floating hand. The finger whipped up towards Ike, who was still clinging to his curtain in the fetal position and generally looking like he'd be happier dead. "IF YOU KILL THE VESSEL OF SUBSPACE, THE SEED OF ULTIMATE SUBSPACE WILL BE RELEASED UPON THE WORLD! IT IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE! FATTY MUST LIVE!"

Mario and Lucario looked stung by his words, and they hung their heads like poor little puppies who had just gotten reprimanded by their owner. Lucario scuffed his heel, and he said, "Aw shucks, I totally forgot."

"DAMN STRAIGHT, BEE-YOTCH. THIS IS WHY I AM MASTER HAND, AND YOU ARE MERELY SUBSERVIENT PEONS."

The two of them scuffled off, tails between their legs. Well, Lucario did anyway. Ike finally began to relax.

"That was…that was, pretty clever, you know," he said to Master Hand, chuckling nervously and beginning to slide down his curtain. "I wish I would have thought of that when things first started to get out of hand, right? Just pretend to roll with it, and tell them things that would have gotten me out of being killed?" Ike's feet hit the ground. "Freakin brilliant, huh-"

"APPREHEND HIM," Master Hand shouted, and Marth and Diddy Kong darted out and dive-tackled Ike. Marth did, anyway; Diddy Kong just sort of latched onto the back of his head and beat him senseless with a banana.

Marth marched Ike back over to Master Hand, and once he noticed what exactly Diddy Kong was doing he peeled him off and threw him aside. Ike was still pissed, don'tchaknow, and he wheeled on Marth, his mouth foaming with slobbers and crazies. "Is there ANYONE in this room who isn't BAT SHIT CRAZY!"

Marth rose his hand like an over-eager school child trying to answer a question. "I'm not bat shit crazy! I'm not!"

Ike draped his arm over his shoulder in a sort of cliched, buddy-buddy confidential maneuver. "Then maybe you could help me out here real quick. Things as I understand them currently stand something like this: Lucario joined a cult because he threw a gooey bomb at Pit, and Wario and Mario are also in this cult because their names all end in "ario," and for some god-awful unknown reason the three of them are trying to create the Ultimate source of Subspace with their three ignoble gasses, only not really, because when we all showed up in our shiny little Coalition Against Evil, they went bullshitting on about us trying to take over the world with an Eggplant Alien Armada or something, and apparently Pit's the leader even though he goes into a psychotic breakdown every time he's within five feet of an eggplant and Popo and Nana are both double-agents. Well, actually maybe they're not double-agents, cuz the Cult of Ario said they were gonna kill them too because they were Pit's peons; grunts, excuse me; so I'm not sure who's side they're really supposed to be on. Nana and Popo probably don't even know whose side they're supposed to be on. And apparently _I'm_ the so-called Vessel of Subspace because the Seed of Ultimate Subspace got planted in my innards because I eat a lot of chicken or something like that and now everybody's trying to kill me to prevent the eggplant bastards from taking over the world, only then they stopped cuz Master Hand said it wouldn't work, and then I got jumped by you and Shitty Kong anyway. And I'm _still_ not really sure what the hell Link's doing here."

Link held up the popcorn bucket and rattled it. "I made the popcorn!"

"Well there you go." Ike said flatly.

Marth nodded energetically. "Yeah, that all sounds pretty much right."

Ike stared at him.

"Oh, well, okay, there _are_ a couple _little_differences," and Marth rapped Mario on the head repeatedly until he forsook the Story Stick. "Nobody's really trying to take over the world or anything I guess, and there aren't really any wacky cults either. Because who the hell wants to be in a cult with Wario? Oh, and there aren't any eggplants, involved either. Also, Popo and Nana aren't double-agents, they're just bat shit crazy. Same thing goes for Pit, although to his credit, he's slightly _less_ bat shit crazy. And that's definitely a good thing. Oh, but that Seed of Ultimate Subspace? That part's real."

Ike had been looking relieved and a little smug all up until that last remark and then a look of horror crossed his face and he clutched his stomach. "It _is_!" he gagged.

Marth just kept on a-tapping his Story Stick to the Pulse of Discovery®. "Oh, yeah, sure," he said easily, "But it wasn't Pit or the Ice Climbers or even anybody in the Cult of Ario who had it arranged, though. It was Master Hand."

"_Master_ Hand! What! Are you _serious_?"

Marth looked at him sternly. "Of _course_ I'm serious. I'm a pretty boy from a generic fantasy RPG, just like you are. We don't have imaginations."

"That's a very good point," Ike admitted, thoughtfully, but another moment later he brushed it aside for a clearly more pressing issue. "But why would _Master Hand_ want to plant the Seed of Ultimate Subspace in _me_?"

"FOR THE LULZ," Master Hand piped up.

Ike stared at him. "_How_!"

"I JUST DEEP-FRIED IT AND GARNISHED IT WITH SOME CHICK-FIL-A SAUCE. YOU REALLY ARE A FAT ASS."

Ike stared at him some more. "So what's gonna happen to me now?"

"YOU BLOW UP. AND DIE. THE WAY GOD INTENDED."

"Oh, don't mind him," Marth said lightly, air-swatting Master Hand aside with the Story Stick. "He just wanted to see how crazy everybody could go based just on a few rumors and speculations, on just a little fluff and circumstance. There are really two ways this can all end, you see, and the first is to blow up and die, the way God intended."

"And the second?" Ike said expectantly.

"The second? You just have to not eat any chicken for a few days, and you'll be perfectly fine."

Ike's expression was inscrutable.

Marth looked concerned. "What?"

"I think I'm gonna go with that first option."

"FATTY!" and that was Pit roaring from across the room, still stretched across his rack. Marth cracked Lucario on the top of his head and shooed him over to untie him. Pit rushed over to him, but stopped awkwardly a few feet away. He set his jaw and shook his head in all hardcore like that foot cheese. "Can't let you do that, Starfox. Rule one of Friendship: Friends don't let friends let alien eggplant babies let themselves devour their entrails."

Ike looked at him with astonishment and disgust. "Pit we are not friends."

But it didn't matter. Pit had enveloped him in the world's most awkward squirrelly bastard little angel man hug. "I know you think you got a dependency Fatty, and I know it's tough, but it's okay, it don't matter, we're gonna get through this thing together, okay? And I know you're in denial," he added when Ike began to yell obscenities at him, "But there's nothing you could ever do to drive me away, alright? I'm in this for the long haul. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you-"

Ike scowled at him, a fiery and homicidal look spreading over his body. "What about when you thought I had a bunch of eggplants inside of me?"

"Oh, _Fatty_, you _do_ have a bunch of eggplants inside of you."

He nutted him then and tossed his cringing body aside, then turned back to Marth. "There's really only one more thing that's really bothering me."

"Only one? That's very concerning," said Marth, and he frowned slightly.

Ike ignored him. "How did Master Hand figure out what was going on in here?"

Marth laughed openly at that and then motioned over his shoulder at Olimar who was standing under Master Hand shock-still like the most sick farce of a garden gnome the world had ever seen. "Link went into a fit of emo rage and started texting Olimar about everything that was going on. He read it, told Master Hand, and now here we are."

At that Ike gave a long slow stare over his shoulder at Link.

"What?" he said defensively.

"You talk to _Olimar_?"

"Maybe? So _freaking_ what!"

"How much of a loser _are_ you?"

"Shut up! You talk to Pit!"

After Link said that Ike just had to sit down and cry because it was so, so true.

* * *

"Whatchu got there, Fatty?"

Ike had carried a tray over to the table where Link and Pit were sitting in the cafeteria. Willingly. Because as painful a fact it was, nobody else just freaking liked Ike enough to let him sit with them. And as much as Pit and Link both made him want to gouge out his own eyeballs and spear them on shishkabob rods and roast them over a mushroom cloud, he still had his fragile little bubble of self esteem to worry about and it was easier to delude himself into believing that these people he despised were friends than coming to grip the hard truth that they weren't. I guess he's kind of a sissy like that. Bawwwwwwww.

He scowled openly at Pit, probably extra hormonal for the aforementioned reasons. "Mashed goddamn potatoes."

"There's not any chicken in it, is there?"

He stared at him. "_Mashed. Goddamn. Potatoes._"

Pit rolled his eyes dramatically, tossed back his head in a gesture of exasperation. "Well excuuuuuuuuse me for being uncertain of all the ingredient complexities of your exotic food choices. I am the captain of Palutena's bad ass Fluffy Angel Death Army, not freaking Alton Brown."

Link fiddled uncomfortably with the mylar lid on his green jell-o cup. "Seriously Ike, chill out, I mean, he's only trying to help you."

Ike decided not to gratify that comment with a response and opted instead to stare with malcontent down into the chunky white bowels of his mashed potato agony.

"So anyway," Pit said after an uncomfortably long time, "There's something I've been wanting to tell you, Fatty." And before Ike had any time to complain, Pit had leaned over next to him, one wing wrapped around to shelter him from view, and gestured over towards a table where Lucas was sitting alone. "You ever notice the Earthbound characters, huh? They're all named after consoles, huh, except _him_. The first guy was called "Ninten," you know, short for "Nintendo Entertainment System," and the second guy was called "Ness," short for "NES," which I guess is technically the same thing, but whatever. Listen! But this guy, he shoulda been called, like, I don't know, Disci, or something. Wiimo. But it's just freakin _Lucas_!" Ike had been trying to inch away, but Pit latched onto his sleeve and pulled him back over, and the look he was giving Lucas was one of pure, unbridled determination. "I don't think he's legit!"

"Is zhat so?" Ike said, trying to sound indulgent, and he inched away again.

"Now you listen to me, Fatty!" Pit said, angry, hooking him on the sleeve again. "This is a big freaking deal, you understand? Stuff that really, really matters like this don't come up much, right? The rest is just stupid. You either chase after the big game, or you spend your life drowning in fluff and circumstance, my friend. Now, we have to decide how we're going to go about kidnapping him for questioning. I happen to know from a reliable source that the kid's into whittling, so I was thinking that we get a big pile of sticks, and put them under a net…and…"

Pit prattled on, and Ike was only left to wonder, defeated, when exactly his life had become a never-ending string of pointless endeavors…

**THE END.**

* * *

**EDIT:**Oh wow! Reviews? And some favorites too? I honestly hadn't expected that. Especially Joeb: It was my birthday when I read that review, and I could have done backflips of happiness! And that aside, I feel...distressingly unable to adequately put into words exactly how grateful I am for what you wrote. I'm very glad that you enjoyed the story so much (The best fanfiction you've ever read? Out of many fandoms? And all genres? I find it hard to believe, and yet at the same time the thought makes me so giddy that I hardly know how to act). And then to follow all that up with the exact reasons _why_ you liked it! Please excuse me if I sound a bit like a raving lunatic right now, but your review was one of the nicest surprises I've gotten in a long time. I was moved. Very much. Thank you!


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